In modern computing applications, it is common for the data that is presented to an ordinary application user to be just a fraction of the data that is generated and/or used internally by the application. One reason for this is simply to avoid overwhelming the user with information. The data fraction presented to the user is typically carefully designed and/or chosen to help achieve the user's goals. However, it is not uncommon for some application users, such as application administrators, to desire and/or to require access to a greater fraction of the internal application data, for example, for auditing, resource tuning and/or anomalous behavior investigation (“debugging”) purposes. Furthermore, the needs and/or goals of users can change, and archives of historical data have many times proven valuable.
Accordingly, it is not uncommon for applications to record selected portions of the internal application data in data logs for later processing and/or inspection. However, conventional data logging mechanisms have several shortcomings, particularly in a virtualized-remotely accessed computing context, such as cloud computing. In cloud computing, a collection of physical servers, perhaps geographically distributed, may maintain a (potentially larger) collection of virtual computer system “instances.” Applications may obtain various benefits by executing in the virtual computer system instances. However, such virtual system instances typically have relatively limited data storage suited to data logs. Some conventional cloud computing platforms include an independent, reliable bulk data storage service. However, such services typically have interfaces that are heavyweight, inefficient and/or otherwise unsuited to data logging, and particularly high rate data logging.
Same numbers are used throughout the disclosure and figures to reference like components and features, but such repetition of number is for purposes of simplicity of explanation and understanding, and should not be viewed as a limitation on the various embodiments.